


Idle Hands and Muddled Thoughts

by A_N_Whitmore



Series: Obsession [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Druids, Emissaries, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Initiation, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:44:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_N_Whitmore/pseuds/A_N_Whitmore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles undergoes his initiation into Alan's coven, meanwhile back in Beacon Hills, Peter is feeling Stiles' absence keenly; even physically....? Is it possible they could be connected to one another? And what is up with Deucalion? Stiles notices something strange about the Demon Wolf</p>
            </blockquote>





	Idle Hands and Muddled Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoy!
> 
> Warning for mild blood letting for ritual purposes and allusion to drowning.
> 
> Mature content due to profanity.

Its been four weeks since Stiles left and all Peter can think of are his hands. The way they moved in the pale broken moonlight, echoing a rhythmic pattern older than anyone could recall over his body, something he’s tried to replicate and failed every single time. This scares him, everywhere he goes he’s reminded of the boy who runs with his pack. He sees the flash of a red hoodie and has the urge to give chase until he remembers that Stiles is in Missouri.

He’s swiped Derek’s cell phone to steal Stiles’ number but he only gets a message stating that the user is out of the service area most of the time, the few times it does ring through he leaves a message asking Stiles to come back to give it another chance. On the most recent try however, Alan Deaton answers and tells Peter that Stiles isn’t available and wouldn’t be contactable for the rest of the next month and a half as he went through his Initiation.

“You’re going to train him…”

“His powers were strong enough to call the Void Peter… If we don’t harness and train that energy as an Emissary, he could become Dark himself. He’s already tainted by it, that’s why you’re attracted to him as an anchor.”

“So you’ve decided to just remove his emotions? Make him cold and mute and dead inside like you Alan? Like your sister? A perfect magical counsellor with no thought of self preservation? Just put the Pack above everything else is that it? God, that isn’t Stiles! Did you tell him that? Did you tell him what it could cost him?”

Peter felt like punching a hole through the bathroom mirror of his loft, his eyes shone with their unnatural lupine glare bouncing off the silvered glass in the studio lighting. He needed to calm down before he broke things… He wasn’t very lucid when he started breaking things.

“We think of it more as a benefit to be able to think logically, and as for your idea that we have no thought of self preservation, need I remind you of Jennifer? We will do anything we have to in order to stay alive. The calling of Emissary isn’t a choice Peter, it’s a weight thrust upon a small few and an even smaller few survive this far. Most Sparks are killed within the few months of discovery by other Supernatural powers, so count Stiles among the strong and the lucky.”

“Lucky? How the hell would you call being pushed into this and losing his mother lucky?”

It was his fault, if he had just bitten Stiles that night, none of them would have been in this mess today.

_Yes but if he had bitten Stiles, he would most likely be permanently dead and Stiles would be Alpha in his place instead of Derek._

“Just let me talk to him.”

“He’s on a walk, but I’ll be sure to let him know you’re thinking of him, he’ll need it.”

“Tonight’s the Equinox and a Blue Moon Deaton, you can’t be serious!”

“It was his choice Peter, sometimes when the quarters call we have no choice but to obey.”

“He’ll need a focus, someone to keep him steady… There’s no one else there… No one who can keep Void locked, what if it breaks loose again?”

“Peter, you’re underestimating a coven of Emissary… Besides, we have Deucalion as a Watcher.”

“So the Druid Order posted Deucalion as one of their Cú Ifreann"

“If you want to be so blunt about it yes… If we can’t control him… then possibly,”

“Listen to me Alan… I may have known you since my sister took over.. But understand one thing, you fucking hear me? You harm one hair on Stiles Stilinski’s head and I will rip your coven to shreds. Do you understand me? Deucalion included… You let me, understood? That boy is _mine_."

 

The spring Martha leads him to is positively fucking FRIGID as he looks at the ice on the edges but her wizened face just laughs silently as she pushes his naked body ass first into the bone chilling water. Her great grand daughter Kim was next in with him but not as an Initiate, no she was an Attending to his first official Rite. Why the hell Deaton had to call the Gathering at five this morning was beyond him, but now he understands as he watches ALL of the Emissaries and various ranked Coven members flank the pool.

Deucalion however is conspicuously absent, he notes, or was… Suddenly he notes the smell of Sulfur and flame coming from the left and Deucalion’s wolf comes forth on the water, _not in it but on it_ and his neck and feet are wreathed in flames… Real flames. The Demon Wolf come to Life.

Suddenly all of them are silent, nothing is heard except for the sound of Stiles’ breathing and teeth chattering in the frigid water. There is the sound of a lone whippoorwill touting it’s happy song, but that too is cut off when a low rumbling hum starts from the eldest men. It seems to sink inside and make Stiles’ pulse thud and he has the sudden urge to sway and he doesn’t know why until a beat of drumming starts from the younger men and it’s syncopated against staves from those who are middle aged.

Martha rises from her kneeling position but the drumming doesn’t cease, if anything the tempo increases as the song melody becomes more engrained in Stiles’ mind. She mouths a word and suddenly unfurling over the wood, her voice is strong and nowhere near the thin reed-like sound she’s been speaking with beforehand.

“Seo, is é an lá de na laethanta, an tús le breithe nua. Anseo muid fáilte roimh amach naíon, agus gan fhios agam,nach bhfaca, gafa i na bealaí de leathcheann. Is é ár ndualgas naofa mar clan a thabhairt dó suas ar dheis.”

_This, the day of all days, is the dawn of a new birth. Here we welcome forth an infant, unknowing and unseeing, trapped in the ways of fools. It is our sacred duty as a clan to bring him up right._

Deaton had made him study the Initiate ritual text, forcing him to learn the Irish Gaelic pronunciation and repeat it because every Initiate needed to memorise the knowledge. Knowledge was tantamount in importance in Druidic society. His first steps here were about establishing control.

“Cé anseo thairg a bheith mar a bheadh athair leis an Tiarna óg na móinéir? Cé anseo beidh dhéanamh air i mhaith agus i tinn, ag siúl leis agus a mhúineadh dó go léir na beithigh na réimsí agus na luibheanna an domhain?

_Who here has offered to be like a father to this young lord of the meadow? Who here will carry him in good and in ill, to walk with him and teach him all the beasts of the fields and the herbs of the earth?_

The drumming ceases as Alan steps forward and pushes back his white cowl.

“Beidh mé máthair mhaith.”

_I will good mother_

She stretches out her white willow arm from beneath her gossamer fine gown and gestures toward Stiles, part of him knows this is a symbolic death and that he only has to be held under briefly but he can’t help recalling his first Sacrifice to save his father. Today he holds nothing in his hands, today he is not in a metal tub in Deaton’s office, today he isn’t really dying….

So why does he feel so scared?

He watches as Alan tips him back and cradles him in his arms.

“Because today… You’re no longer a child.”

And suddenly the world was gone….

 

Peter finds himself clutching his chest as he falls to the ground in front of Derek and Cora, one moment he recalls standing by the table about to brilliantly insult Derek’s rather pathetic attempt at pack leadership and the next he finds himself in a pool of water he doesn’t remember coughing up, like he’s survived drowning and been brought back to life. All he knows is that right now he can feel gasping in the back of his mind and it triggers his own, like an asthmatic in need of an inhaler.

“Peter! Derek get Scott! Ask him if he still carries his old pump.”

“Scott! Scott!” He hears his nephew’s voice ringing though his head like a freight train, but the sound of plastic ticking off of skin is an even more welcome sound at this moment, as he knows the smell of Albuterol from the rest home. Thank the fucking Gods for old human sentimentality.

He feels Cora straighten his airway, tilting his head back as she thrusts his chin forward. Derek apparently has managed to figure out the mechanics of working the device because he feels the canister depress two quick puffs of medication into his system, triggering an almost immediate relief on both ends of his mind. His chest heaves and his hands shake as he rises but he looks at Derek with narrowed eyes.

“Now do you believe me?”

 

Stiles awakes to a warm pool surrounded by the coven in the midst of the darkened cave he had seen surrounded by candle stubs earlier on his way down to the spring, Kim is still naked with his head cradled to her breasts and normally he’d be more interested but he swears he almost just drowned because his throat feels sore as though he’s been coughing and he has a niggling bad feeling lingering somewhere in the back of his melon… Like when Jackie Chan says “Bad Day”.

He watches as others begin lighting candles surrounding the cave in small wall sconces and his eyes grow wide as thousands of swirling marks and symbols come alive…. This was not Kansas or freaking Missouri any more Toto. However, he keeps his running ADHD mouth on silent mode for the time being, Deaton would answer everything when the time was right. He can smell sage and cinquefoil and foxglove and thousands of other smells all blending together, foxglove was a bitch hallucinogen to Van Gogh during the Yellow Period.

He knows that he is ritually being birthed into a new life and that it is sacred but part of him is still awed and giddy despite the solemn moments of the occasion and that weird feeling…. If he’d had to place a name to it, it would either be Derek or Peter. It definitely feels like the _Hale brand of Sour Patch Kids Bad Day FEELING_. Then again that could be him getting pathetically high.

He pushes good thoughts toward the negativity and feels the thought suddenly bloom like a flower in the moonlight, shy with soft and gentle seeking tendrils. He pulls it towards him and caresses the thought gently, not knowing what else to do other than send out a sentence of ‘dude everything cool, chill’.

He’s being carried into the steam of the hot spring as the thought pulls back and he is left alone with only himself for company in his own mind, he watches as Kim steps down into the spring yet again and he’s lowered back into her waiting arms.

“Sí a dhéanann ionadaíocht ar an Máthair Mhór uair amháin maighdean rugadh, agus mar a théann sí céim nua sin ní mór duit anois. An mbeidh ghlacadh tú an táille agus a thuiscint go i sin a dhéanamh go bhfuil sí do dheirfiúr agus go dtugann tú freagra léi mar ar do mháthair féin? Chun an chuid eile dá lá a bheidh sí a mhuirearú mar má tá tú ag a leanbh.

_She who represents the Great Mother was once virgin born, and as she enters a new phase so now must you. Will you take this charge and understand in doing so she is your sister and that you answer to her as to your own mother? For the rest of her days she will be charged as if you were her child._

In order for Kim to apparently become the new Priestess after Martha passes, she needs to prove that she is ready to lead. That means taking on Initiates like Stiles was becoming and passing on the knowledge of her side of the Coven, knowledge that not all of the Emissary were privy to. When Deaton had come to him in the beginning of the week and told him what was planned, he didn’t quite understand it.

“Wait… So you mean you don’t know everything?”

Stiles set the old leather bound grimoire on the bed in his small cabin and stood up pacing for a second. Who would be training him then?

“Stiles, you have to admit, you’re a rather unique case… I called five other groups before considering my own.”

“Why?”

“Because… Stiles, I’m a descendant of The Order, the original Druids. I don’t answer to many but those I do answer to have a lot more power than I do and they operate on some very old rules. Do you remember how the Argents have Hunters? How they operate on a code? Well so does The Order, although The Order doesn’t play around. When they say you broke the laws, you broke the laws and you rarely get a chance to explain. The Order has those who are of the Supernatural community who have volunteered as Watchers. These Watchers are gifted with abilities beyond their normal abilities of the supernatural variety and their job is specifically to watch for Emissaries and Coven members who step out of line. If you create enough of an infraction, The Order will call for your head. Do you understand?”

“Who’s your Watcher?”

“That honour belongs to me.” Deucalion appeared through smoke, the scent of sulphur trailing behind him.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Stiles looked back and forth between them and hung his head.

“This has got to be some sort of sick game.”

“I’m afraid not, Deucalion was chosen to be Cú Ifreann after the torture of Jennifer by Kali, you may think it’s a bit strange giving him a job killing Druids, but he could somehow sense she was turning Dark. Darkness can be harnessed and used Stiles, which is why we’re doing this before it’s too late.”

“Did you know?” Stiles turned to Deaton with a critical look as Deucalion interrupted.

“They’re not usually allowed to know, but in this case he figured it out and you already know me so… There isn’t a point in hiding it from you.”

“So the sulphur thing and smoke…?”

“Surround me in a multitude of powerful magic users and latent sparks, this is what you’ll get. I usually don’t have enough power to bring on Hellfire myself but you can feel the lightning. It’s why they call me the Demon Wolf. The smoke travel was a small gift from Martha and The Hunt.”

“The Hunt? As in THE HUNT, like Goblin King… Faeries, that Hunt?”

“Yes, every year, it’s why you’ll never find me around on Samhain.”

“So who else is going to train me?”

“Martha’s great grand daughter Kim, she’s going to be the next High Priestess or in our coven the Good Mother after Martha passes. Her father didn’t have enough talent to control the coven and his mother died from cancer last year before she could step down. You are her final Initiate to train past the first year, the thirteenth. Thirteen members traditionally hive off of a main coven but in our case we expand because we haven’t needed to change.”

“So she’s only going to be training me in like the basic things?”

“No Stiles, only people who’ve had exceptionally unusual cases go to a priestess or a developing priestess for training. She’ll give you information I can’t, things I never learned.”

 

Stiles comes back to himself and hears the automatic “Aye beidh mé máthair” come out of his mouth, he knows time hasn’t passed long because Deaton hasn’t scrunched his eyebrows together and Kim’s arms haven’t shifted in tiredness but yet he feels like he’s been here an age and a day as he watches Deaton handle the Sgian-dubh lightly and draw a deep cut across both their palms and Kim’s thumb tip. He hates knives and needles of any kind but today he gets the joy of both! He grimaces slightly as their palms and her right thumb join together, binding them as a family and bonding him into the coven.

He can feel the sense of their Spark, of their essence joining with his and it calms something within him for the first time, the racing thoughts are still there but they have an order to them, they aren’t just a jumble of mixed up sentences anymore. They form a coherent idea and for the first time he feels like he isn’t going to lose control of his emotions. It’s a heady experience and he wants more.

Kim and Deaton lift him up and start washing him with some strange smelling concoction and his body instantly just clears, his sense of smell opens and he can smell everything and the humming has started again but this time Martha adds her voice to the mix and he can hear a pipe in the cavern echoing off the walls, he swears he can see the stars when he looks up above, and suddenly it makes sense… The designs are star trails and maps.

“A rá liom tá sé in am do ainm, ba chóir go mbeadh máthair-ainm, oiriúnach ainm don chlann ar an leanbh buachaill,” Deaton calls to Kim as they scrub down his legs.

_I say it’s time for a name, the boy child should have a name mother, a name fit for the clan._

For the first time a roar of applause thunders through the cave as Martha comes up behind him and takes the sponge from Kim’s hand and he finds himself staring into her eyes, watching as they become lidded; he’s come to understand it is common with her gift of Foresight.

Her voice becomes slightly modulated like the early 2000’s Sci-fi remake of the Benne Gesserit Sister’s Voice and the name pours out but not just his clan name, no… He has a warning judging from the look on Deaton’s face.

“Beidh sé ar a dtugtar Kieran, dorcha ach fós álainn, go fóill, uafásach leis an gceann deireanach ba chóir siúd a thugann aire fhágáil dó. Faoi na réaltaí athrú Cosmaí beidh sé, fórsa chinneadh ag lámha ar siúl de mheon ghrá.”

_He shall be called Kieran, dark but still beautiful, yet, terrible to the last should those who care leave him. Under the stars a cosmic change he shall be, a force determined by hands held in Love’s faith._

He’s heard what he thinks is his name, but everyone starts shuffling uncomfortably until Martha splashes at them.

“Oh please! You all act as if a ghost bit you on the ass! It’s prophecy! You all know time is never fixed, prophecies can change in an instant so there’s no use getting riled up over nothing! Now let’s get Kieran a new robe and get back to the grove. We still have a mark to put somewhere on that muscled body of my great great grand son’s so let’s go! Micheal play something lively it’s beginning to sound more like a going home party than an Initiation around here.”

Kim smiles and dunks Stiles down beneath the warm hot spring water three times and Deaton pulls him up, together the crowd lifts him out of the pool, not letting his feet touch the stone until they are slipped into soft deer leather shoes and his body is wrapped in the fawn brown robe of Initiates.

They all proceed to gather their staves and everyone claps Stiles on the back in a celebratory welcome. His first step complete, he now has to be marked as a Druid and take his vow before everyone or else the ritual cleaning and naming would have been for nothing.

Instead of saying his vows traditionally, Stiles has made a request to Martha and the Council of the Coven to write them and deliver those instead. So no one has an idea of what he is going to say as they proceed back to the camp.

Deaton and Kim walk behind him followed by Deucalion still in his Hellhound form, but Stiles ignores the smell of sulphur for the smell of the most amazing smelling foods he has ever had the pleasure of smelling. He would never again say that vegetarian people didn’t know how to cook. He just prays that they have the mushrooms that he loves.

Yet he has to ignore the food until he says his vow and takes his identifying mark, no matter how much his stomach protests the action. As the bonfire is lit, everyone gathers in the centre of the grove and Stiles finds himself the center of attention once more. He used to have really bad stage fright when he was a kid, that was until Scott showed up. Then he became the class clown. So, tonight he just has to picture Scott.

No matter how much he wants to picture Scott, he can only see Peter’s face gazing up at him softly in the moonlight. It’s ok…. He can get through this, it isn’t like one of Coach’s Econ tests.

“So, uh, than, thank you for coming today to my Initiation.”

He breathes out slowly through his mouth and starts again.

“Like I said thank you for coming, when Deaton first asked me to start out on this journey, I had no idea that it was going to actually involve training to become like all of you. I didn’t think you could study to be an Emissary. I thought it was something handed down from father to son or something like that. Granted I’ve only been here for a month but I feel like you’ve all become really close to me. I hated it when I first got out of Deaton’s car, and to be honest I really don’t think I will ever take Oil of Oregano again but it grew on me. Even the sounds of raccoons fighting at night sounds normal to me now.”

Stiles paused and looked around as the flames crackled against his back, everyone looked interested and not bored out of their mind so he continued.

“When Martha told Deaton two weeks ago I could take the Initiation, I really wasn’t sure whether or not she was serious but then I found the Grimoire on my bed and a note saying it was mine to copy from until I built up the knowledge… Well I thought, this is it, Stiles G. Stilinski isn’t going to be the average human anymore. I decided I wasn’t going to look back. So here it is, this is my vow guys.”

Stiles took another breath and closed his eyes, reaching and feeling for that small tentative thought he’d felt earlier in the back of his mind and felt the thought press against him as though saying hello again with a comforting warmth around him.

“I will use my gifts to the best of my ability and always in the knowledge that power comes with a price, that price must be paid equally. The foremost purpose of my journey in this Coven is to seek to become an Emissary of The Druid Order. An Emissary seeks to counsel his pack or his leader to the best of his ability and has a duty of loyalty. But, above all else the duty that is most respected and sought after in an Emissary is that of a Seeker of Truth and Knowledge. An Emissary is to seek out a Spark to pass on the Knowledge before death, if for any reason a Seeker of Knowledge becomes corrupted by the power of his or her Knowledge, they know the Watchers are always watching and The Order is always aware. An Emissary must be prepared to fight and die for knowledge.”

Stiles stops and smiles as everyone takes in his words, allowing them to sink in for a moment before nodding and murmuring to one another in agreement.

Martha walks over to him and takes his jaw into her soft hands, looking into his eyes as she speaks, her words in a soft blowing and reedy voice once more.

“Wise words Initiate Kieran, wise words for your vows, I and the clan accept them, you are welcome into this coven as a son, a brother and a fellow practitioner, you may now receive your mark.”

She leads him over to a leather covered table with a book on top along with towels and a row of varying sized copper needles and different inks in bottles.

Stiles has no idea what he’s doing when he sits down and Micheal the pipe player sits across from him stroking his thick red beard rather fondly, but he can tell this man likes giving ornate designs and he won’t let Stiles wimp out and pick something simple like a little butterfly.

“Where do you want yer mark lad?” Micheal is apparently fully Irish and one of the Coven Council Heads. Shit.

“My right arm.”

“Good choice, that’s your invoking arm! You’ll need a good mark to keep the power strong! Now do yeh have any thoughts as to what yeh want teh have?”

“A wolf!”

The thought comes to him like lightning, he wants the wolf on his arm and the old oak tree outside the Hale house, the one that turned bright colours in the fall and draped like a canopy over the burned out husk

“And a tree, Deaton, the tree… The one on my phone!”

“What kind of tree is it, I only put certain things on Initiates.”

Deaton moves through the crowd and shows Micheal the picture along with another photo, presumably the picture of Peter in his Alpha form, a rather scruffed hulking wolf but graceful when quickly sketched under Micheal’s artistic gaze.

“I like this, it’ll help keep yeh grounded boy. Now, tell me what yeh think?”

He holds the picture up for Stiles’ gaze and waits for him to nod quickly before turning it to the gathered crowd.

“Good Mother do you approve?”

With her gossamer gown gathered about, she gazes and smiles gently, nodding her assent.

“Let the Initiate take his mark!”

“All right, Euan, bring me the bowls and have Jared get the mat and someone get me a fresh sheet and another for cloths. You may want to bite something Kieran… Taking your place hurts like a bitch…”


End file.
